An X Fan Account Crowned Michael Olise the Ballon d'Or Winner. Then London Gave It to Harry Kane.

Right ceremony energy, wrong name on it.

Award shows usually save the winner's name for the stage. But on Monday, an Olise-themed account on X held its own ceremony, with an 11-second clip and a caption that made everyone wait for the name: "The Ballon d'or winner is … Michael Olise."

The actual Ballon d'Or, handed out Monday evening at the London Palladium, went to Harry Kane, the first of his career, USA Today reported. The fan version kept moving anyway, and its most-liked replies are playing along as if the vote went the other way.

The post came from @OliseNotPolice, whose display name is "Olise Not a Fan of Police," at 12:48 p.m. Pacific time. X counted 702,696 views on it as of Tuesday, along with 41,703 likes.

The Winner Never Breaks Stride

The video is dark and grainy. It shows a man in a white dinner jacket and a black bow tie working his way down an aisle between packed rows of seats.

Then he steps onto a wide, lit stage where a man in a tuxedo waits beside a lectern, and he doesn't stop there. In the final frames he's still walking across the stage, eyes down, like somebody with a car double-parked outside. That's the whole bit, and it works.

The Replies Took the Joke and Ran

The most-liked reply was a one-word endorsement. Another reasoned that a man who wouldn't even pause for the Ballon d'Or could only be Olise.

The real winner came with more history than a caption could carry. Before the ceremony, The Sporting News noted that a Kane win would end a 25-year drought for English players. The last one to win, Michael Owen, showed up for Monday's show, which had moved to London to honor Stanley Matthews, the award's first winner. It was the first time the ceremony was held outside France.

The fan account wasn't even the day's first early announcement. Earlier Monday, the Ballon d'Or's own website mistakenly published an article declaring Kane the winner, The Sporting News reported. Similar write-ups on Kylian Mbappé and Lamine Yamal surfaced too, and all of them came down.

The organizers, in other words, had a winner drafted for every outcome. @OliseNotPolice only drafted one.

The night's most famous name skipped the stage altogether. Lionel Messi, who finished fifth, was at the Messi Cup, an under-16 tournament named for him, on a sideline in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USA Today reported. He watched Boca Juniors play UE Cornellà, a Catalan club he bought in April, while many of soccer's top stars filed into the Palladium.

Back on X, the second-most-liked reply told the poster, with a curse word up front, that they'd called it. Harry Kane went home with the trophy that says otherwise.

Source: X, retrieved October 27, 2026. Other sources: centraloregondaily.com, sports.yahoo.com.